1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to stage devices, pattern formation apparatuses, exposure apparatuses, stage drive methods, exposure methods, and device manufacturing methods, and more particularly to a stage device equipped with a coarse/fine movement stage that moves along a predetermined plane, a pattern formation apparatus equipped with the stage device, an exposure apparatus equipped with the stage device, a stage drive method of driving the coarse/fine movement stage, an exposure method that makes use of the stage drive method, and a device manufacturing method that uses the exposure apparatus or the exposure method described above.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventionally, in a lithography process for manufacturing electron devices (microdevices) such as semiconductor devices (integrated circuits or the like) and liquid crystal display devices, an exposure apparatus such as a projection exposure apparatus by a step-and-repeat method (a so-called stepper) or a projection exposure apparatus by a step-and-scan method (a so-called scanning stepper (which is also called a scanner) is mainly used.
However, it is certain that the integration of the semiconductor devices becomes much higher and circuit patterns to be formed on a wafer become finer according to the higher integration, in the future, and therefore further improvement of position detection accuracy of a wafer or the like is required for an exposure apparatus that is a mass-production apparatus of semiconductor devices.
For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0227309 discloses an exposure apparatus in which an encoder-type sensor (an encoder head) is mounted on a substrate table. Especially, in the case where the encoder head disclosed in the U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0227309 is mounted on a coarse/fine movement stage that has a coarse movement stage and a fine movement stage that moves on the coarse movement stage, it is usual to mount the encoder head on the fine movement stage. In this case, however, wiring needs to be installed between the coarse movement stage and the fine movement stage (depending on the circumstances, both the stages need to be connected by optical fibers) in order to supply electric power to the encoder head, but as the fine movement stage moves on the coarse movement stage, there was a possibility that a tensile force acting on the wiring or the like prevented a smooth operation of the fine movement stage. In particular, in the case where a plurality of encoder heads were mounted on the fine movement stage, there was a risk that the drag of the wiring or the like caused a big problem.